The present invention relates generally to a power management control system and in particular, to software that permits rapid development of a customized tabular graphic that permits viewing of data provided by a selected electronic device of a power management control system.
Power management control systems monitor and control a variety of intelligent electronic devices of an electrical distribution system. The power management control system includes a computer connected to a common bus, which allows the electronic devices to communicate with a server. The control system provides graphical representations of the devices of the distribution system that enables a user to monitor and operate the distribution system.
Current PMCS use full Tabular Device Wizards that offer an easy-to-integrate view of an entire device register map of all the corresponding parameters of the device. Many of the Tabular Wizards however, create between 200 and 400 InTouch DDE Tags, which correspond to parameters of the device. This number of DDE Tags not only increases the size of the InTouch database, but can result in a large amount of Modbus traffic. For operators that are only interested in viewing a limited number of registers on a device (e.g. less than 20 registers), the overhead of the full Tabular wizards may be too much to justify their use on a particular screen. Integrators are often creating screens today, by hand, in order to get a quick view of the most important data in their application on a single screen. These custom tables having a substantially reduced list of parameters are most often viewed by the end user. The configuration of such a custom table for each device is time-consuming and requires the integrator to have programming skills.
This invention offers advantages and alternatives over the prior art by providing a Custom Table Wizard for a power management control system that automates the development of a custom table. The Custom Table Wizard provides automated configuration of a custom table graphic for a device of an electrical distribution system. The Custom Table Wizard provides a rapid and cost effective method to enable an integrator to select a small number of important parameters of an electronic device for a custom table graphic. Further, the Wizard is file driven and therefore, devices added to the distribution system in the future may be easily supported by the wizard by simply editing a pair of files.
In accordance with a present invention, a method is provided for generating a custom tabular display of operating data of an intelligent electronic device of an electrical distribution system. The method includes selecting a custom table wizard. The wizard then prompts the integrator to select a device that the integrator wishes to generate a custom table therefor. A server of a power management control system, which monitors a predetermined number of parameters of the selected device, provides a list of parameters of the selected device. The integrator then selects at least one parameter from this list of parameters. A navigational link is provided between the server and the custom table wizard for displaying the selected parameter in a table.